Pennies Please!

In our classroom, we use pennies as an incentive. Each child has their own drawer where they keep their pennies until they are ready to spend them at the class store. The drawers look like this:

The kids can earn pennies several different ways. If they get their homework folder signed Monday- Thursday night, they get 1 penny on Friday morning. They also get a penny if their homework is turned in on time and complete! At the end of each day, if a student has moved their clip up to orange, they get 1 penny, and if they've moved to yellow (wow!!) then they get 2 pennies!

I also randomly give out pennies to good behavior! However... if they make poor choices, sometimes they owe me a penny. This does not happen very often because they want as many pennies as they can get! I try to make the focus of the class store to be privileges rather than toys. For instance, they can buy the chance to eat lunch with me, or sit at my desk, or sit by a friend for a day! They are really enjoying this system and their behavior is rockin'! Plus, it helps when we get to money in our math curriculum. They can trade their pennies in for nickels, dimes, and quarters.